Foolish Man
by bagheera
Summary: BIG SPOILER VOL. 20 ::: Lucifer is amused and wondering, Belial is angsting and learning something she'd rather not...


!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!SPOILER WARNING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BIG SPOILERS UP TO VOLUME 20 (final Volume)

DON'T READ IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW THE ENDING OF ANGEL SANCTUARY!

DISCLAIMER: Angel Sanctuary belongs to Kaori Yuki and Hakusensha.

Warnings: None but blasphemy. Rather one-sided Belial/Lucifer and hints at Lucifer/Alexiel

AN: Maybe I will turn this into a whole series of little pieces for many characters (Michael, Sara and Setsuna, Uriel, ...) but this can stand alone. This is the first time I wrote Lucifer POV...

God is dead.

A sentence so simple and of such monstrosity. For a so long time he had only lived to think those words. To say these words. To scream these words with all his soul. He had never wanted anything else, it seemed. He had been willing to die for it. But he hadn't died.

God had died.

And he was still alive. His mind was totally blank. It didn't feel like his mind now that the only driving force behind it was gone. Who was he now? He was neither the Prince of light, nor the prince of darkness anymore. The Lightbringer had bought the light... and now? The Namegiver was dead. Destiny was dead. Fate was dead. He had never thought past this point.

Slowly Lucifer opened his eyes. Beneath him stretched from horizon to horizon the dark plain of what had once been hell. Above him the sky had lost its infernal hue and looked like any sky above any war wasted land : grey and tired. And slowly lightening.

The curling curves of his lips reminded him of who he was, gently tugged him back to feeling himself once more. He was the one who smiled and asked himself if now that God was dead he was the Supreme Being in this universe. Was he?

He stretched his wings and softly landed on the shattered ground. He didn't feel like the Supreme Being in the universe. He felt rather... small. Compact. Alive. He felt like himself, like truly himself. He realised that he didn't believe in a ruler of this world, right now. Not even in a ruler of hell.

A small red butterfly settled on a rock close by. These were the ruins of some palace, he reckoned. The insect was very pretty. Its frail paper wings fluttered and shivered.

"You were wrong," he told the animal. "I proved you wrong." The wings fluttered.

"You believed in his every word and I did not. See who was right?" The place was so empty. Where were all his followers?

"You thought yourself a rebel but you were not. You were, with every bad deed, only obeying his wishes. That is why I called you vile and low and worthless. That and because you liked it." The fine antennae twitched. Maybe it was a nod. Or laughter. He was amused. He was amused quite often, and that was also quite often mistaken as arrogance. He fancied himself not, but maybe he was. He was, after all, very close to God. Had been.

"But that is over now. You are free of his wishes."

"Am I?" The Mad Hatter smiled. Mad Hatter. An amusing name. She sat on the same rock, in a simple black suit and of course a hat. She looked very thin, and graceful and very frail. God had named her Worthless, and she had named herself the Mad Hatter. But for him she would always be the Butterfly.

"Are you?" She tipped the brim of her hat with her gloved fingers, glimpsing from underneath with falsely wise blue eyes.

"Maybe this was his plan after all. You brought the light and I was quite worthless. Isn't that what he wanted?"

"I did not. The Messiah did, the one variable he had not in his equation. The chaos factor." She laughed and he chuckled. "And you were not worthless, for once."

She looked at him, the false wisdom giving way for something wary and jaded. Her look was questioning, searching.

"Are you not well, my master?" she asked after a while. Her voice sounded brittle, a little confused, almost distrusting. He wondered if it was love that made her always so little when she was with him and so great in his absence. Lucifer walked a few steps, past his loyal follower, and overlooked the land that was his. Not much to begin with, he thought but felt no anger about his destroyed hell. He had never liked it anyway.

"Belial," he said. It was time, he decided, time to let her go. She had fulfilled her destiny, played her part in his play, and it was time to set her free. She would know it anyway, so he could just as well tell her himself.

"Everybody always saw me as something holy. Something close to God. Saw me as a saint of light or darkness, but as a saint. I was not a person, but a symbol, for everybody, for you, for my brother, for God. If I had been only that, I would have been the Lightbringer. I would have dutifully done what God told me to do. But we are not symbols, not pawns, not saints nor sinners. We have no greater meaning. We are just what we are."

"Master...?" her voice was breaking, at the peak of anger or despair. He felt that she had jumped from where she was sitting and was approaching him.

He turned around and looked down at her. She had shed her hat and her red curls were tumbling wildly in a breeze that did not reach him. Her red lips were parted, her eyes reaching for rescue that would not come. He had taken God away from her, and now he would take the Devil away from her.

"I'm just.... a foolish man."

His favourite words. His truth. Alexiel had said them, over and over in his memory. It was who he wanted to be. Her foolish man.

Belial swayed for a moment and he thought she might fall down. He also thought she might scream, and he had never seen her scream. He almost felt pity, for he could remember well the day he had learned of God's true nature. But then she reached out for him, suddenly grasping his hand with her tiny white fingers and pressed her lips on it. They were warm, surprisingly warm. She looked up at him. Her eyes gleamed. More alive than he had ever seen them.

"That is what you are," she smiled.


End file.
